


Doesn't Mean You're Failing

by thepinupchemist



Series: Retail Hell with the Young Avengers [7]
Category: Young Avengers, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Retail, Developing Relationship, Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Esteem Issues, Shopping Malls, Siblings, Tommy POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 16:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20392783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: Tommy doesn't like sleeping alone. He doesn't like yelling. He doesn't really like himself all that much either.But he does like David, and he does like Kate, and he does like Billy (regrettably).Maybe he'll get there with the rest of the shit, too.





	Doesn't Mean You're Failing

**Author's Note:**

> CW Panic attacks, more info on that in the end notes

**Soundtrack: Ukulele Anthem – Amanda Palmer**

_ **Doesn’t Mean You’re Failing** _

Tommy’s life was so fucking bizarre. Here he was, a month out from being twenty – way longer than he expected to live, for the record – sprawled out over three rows of bleachers that bit into his ass and shoulders, watching two community women’s softball teams throw down and _enjoying himself_. Kate’s and Cassie’s team was pretty even with America’s, and as the game wore on, the sun beat down on his head. His scalp went hot and itchy at his dark roots.

He needed to redye his hair before he started looking like Billy.

America’s team busted the tie first. Tommy booed his best and got a thumbs up from Kate and the bird from America, and yeah, he deserved that.

They went out to pizza afterward like they always did, and Kate offered to pay Tommy’s share like she always did, and Tommy said fuck no like he always did. Difference was, whatever happened at Kate’s RIP Mom Let’s Party on Wednesday, she and America sat closer than ever and sneaked each other knowing looks.

They weren’t fucking.

Not yet.

But Tommy would put money on something happening soon.

“So what happened?” Tommy asked that evening, kicking his feet up while Kate helped him bring his hair back to silver-white. He’d stripped the hoodie and balled it up on the bathroom floor with his socks and shoes, reclining barefoot on Kate’s fancy toilet, the kind that had multiple flush settings and an ass blaster.

(“Quit calling it that. It’s a bidet,” Kate would say.)

“It’s none of your damn business,” Kate told him, “and I mean that this time. You’re like somebody’s nosy grandma sometimes, I swear to God.”

“Wow, defensive,” Tommy said, and held up his hands.

“Quit squirming.”

“Was it an emotional heart to heart? Did you make out? Go skinny dipping?”

Kate raised her hand as if to slap his arm, but reconsidered when she remembered she was wearing gloves and bleaching his hair. Instead, she smiled, all sharp teeth, and asked, “What about you and _David_, huh? Did you have an emotional heart to heart? Did you make out? Did you –”

“I’ll have you know I’m getting laid on the regular, kiddo.”

He hadn’t really gotten…deep, or whatever – with David. David saw Tommy’s scars all the time, and sometimes he touched them and sometimes he looked at them long enough that Tommy snapped at him to cut it out, but he never asked. Even Kate had asked.

Tommy did eventually mutter out some of his shitty history to Kate, but not when she asked. He told her on his own terms. And then she told him some of the bullshit that happened to her, and her bullshit sucked too. They moved on, business-like, after the brief and less-than-great gut-spilling, to watching their crappy movies, and didn’t bring it up after. Not in an official capacity, anyway. Sometimes Kate alluded to Tommy’s crap or Tommy approached hers, but only ever to touch base, because he may have been a sack of shit, but he wasn’t going to let anyone mess with Katie.

Now David.

What was happening with David? Hell, anyone’s guess was as good as Tommy. They messed around when they couldn’t sleep. Sometimes they played Mario Kart, at which they were pretty evenly matched. Tommy stole a street sign and decorated it for him, which was a weird impulse on his part, but he got weird impulses all the time when it came to David. David hung the sign up on his wall above his bed, and Tommy flicked his eyes up to look at it sometimes so he didn’t come too fast.

Kate snapped a shower cap on his head and said, “Let’s watch Bakeoff, space cadet.”

Shit like this was surreal. Nights when he went hungry, locked up in juvie for stealing and missing calories ‘cause the prison cut costs by feeding them less; curled up in a crowded room with a bunch of other kids while he waited for another family that thought they could fix him; wasted because he couldn’t face the world sober – those things all hovered behind Tommy heavy and hazy, defining but distant. No longer his reality, but the reality that turned him into shitbag disaster human he was at nineteen-going-on-twenty.

(God, fucking Billy, now that stupid Sound of Music song was going to be stuck in his head.)

And now.

Now he was watching Great British Bakeoff in the _Home Theater, _painting Kate’s toenails because he never could sit still long enough to marathon entire shows without having something to do with his hands.

“You’re getting better at that,” Kate remarked.

“No one is allowed to know I do this for you.”

“Wouldn’t dare tell,” she assured him.

When they rinsed out his hair, Tommy looked like himself again, a contrast to Billy. He didn’t want to be the same as Billy. He was not the same as Billy.

And when Tommy went home that night, in time enough to yank Jacob into a headlock before he brushed his teeth and get a balled up sheet of math homework launched at his head by Aaron, Billy wasn’t in their room. Billy only slept at the house half as much as he used to with Teddy in the picture. Without him, quiet rolled out in their bedroom.

Tommy didn’t like it. Quiet made him antsy. Lots of things made him antsy, but quiet ranked high up there, especially quiet in the absence of noise he was used to. He was used to Billy snuffling and snoring and tossing and turning or cursing at his PC games under his breath.

Ugh. Fuck this.

Tommy swapped his pajamas for running clothes. Maybe David would be awake.

He circled the block like he usually did, but David’s porch was dark. Sometimes David showed up in the middle of Tommy’s run in his hipster glasses and pajamas to read or listen to an audiobook until he tired out enough to actually sleep.

David didn’t sleep great either. Tommy wanted to ask, almost, but he didn’t want pry. He didn’t like when people pried at him, so he paid it forward by not prying back.

But David didn’t appear on his porch, and Tommy found the wish he’d had for it to happen was more like an ache. He jogged up to David’s house anyway. With a cursory glance around the house, he leapt up into the thick tree in the front yard, scaled through the branches, and tumbled onto the roof less-than-gracefully.

Tommy knocked on David’s window.

“I can’t believe you’re asleep, asshole,” he muttered, and knocked again.

After a beat, David threw open the curtains, eyes barely open behind his glasses. He slid the window aside and asked, “What are you _doing_?”

“I just realized I don’t like sleeping alone,” Tommy blurted.

“I have class in the morning, Tommy,” said David. “I don’t have the energy for sex right now.”

“Did I say ‘sex,’ you turd? I said I don’t wanna sleep alone. Let me in.” Tommy didn’t wait for David’s answer. He shoved past him and bounced onto David’s bed where it lay beneath the window.

David sighed. He pulled his glasses off his face and folded the stems back before he set them aside on his bedside table, and crawled back to flop onto his pillows. Tommy liked David’s pillows. They always smelled like classy laundry soap.

With his eyes closed, David said, “At least change your clothes. You smell like a gym.”

“Rude,” Tommy snipped, but he still crossed David’s bedroom to jack a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from – what a fucking nerd – a spelling bee five years ago. He curled around David, then, and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. David smelled so goddamn good. He used some kinda farmer’s market handmade shit to wash up. Tommy used it once or twice, but he liked the way it smelled on David better.

“You’re shaking,” David mumbled. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Antsy,” answered Tommy. “Billy’s over at Teddy’s all the time and it’s so fucking quiet and I’m used to him being there and I wanted to be with you but you weren’t outside so I climbed your tree and that’s why I’m in here.”

David’s eyes slitted open to ask, “Tommy, are you saying that you miss your brother?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. Shut up.”

“It’s okay to miss your brother.”

“I’ve decided I’m safewording out of this conversation,” Tommy said.

David hummed, eyes falling closed again. “Okay,” he agreed, which is why Tommy liked David, because he didn’t push and push and push the way that Billy or Billy’s-mom-but-also-kinda-Tommy’s-mom did.

“You’re lucky you’re handsome,” mumbled David.

“Ha! Gay.”

“Bi. Go to sleep.”

“Fine,” Tommy said. He tried to stop fidgeting as he pulled in as close as he could to David’s body, and exhaled through his nostrils. “...and thanks.”

**

Everything went to hell in a handbasket in the morning. Tommy hadn’t yet reached consciousness, only enough to feel the shift of David’s warm body against his and then the slam of a door. And then a shout, which startled Tommy all the way awake, because who fucking knew what came after shouting – painpainpain, fear that sent Tommy reeling back to being all of five and not understanding that not all dads hit moms and kids.

“Whoa, Tommy,” David’s voice said. His palm landed on Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy flinched before he could stop it.

Only then did Tommy take in his surroundings. David’s face had pillow creases on it. He looked freaked. The door was open, and in the frame stood a teenage girl, probably right around Aaron’s age.

“Kim, what are you doing?” David said, exasperated. Sibling-exasperated.

So this was the sister Tommy had been going out of his way not to meet.

“What am I doing?” Kim echoed. “What are _you_ doing? You have a guy! In your bedroom! In your clothes!”

“_What on earth is going on up there_?” filtered up from the bottom floor.

Tommy’s racing heart wouldn’t stop reeling. Ohfuckshitdamnit he hated when this happened. His whole body rang out like one giant exposed nerve, and his lungs didn’t fill all the way, and he froze up. He wedged his body against the wall, and David’s eyes searched him.

“What’s wrong with him?” Kim asked.

“He’s having a panic attack,” David replied. “Let me figure this out.”

“You’re already busted,” Kim said.

“I can explain,” David told her. “Please handle our parents while I handle this. Please. Please?”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She closed the door behind her.

“Tommy,” David said, voice all soft. “Can I touch you, or will that make it worse?”

“Dunno,” Tommy answered honestly. The words dried his mouth up like a wad of cotton.

David waffled. Then, he reached forward and guided Tommy into his arms. He hugged him, and Tommy hugged back, noodle-armed and disoriented. He pressed his nose into David’s neck and the scent of sleep sweat on David’s clean skin grounded him. David’s hand rubbed up and down his spine. Little by little, Tommy could feel the oxygen coming back to him, acutely aware of the sweat sticky on his forehead where he’d stuck it against David’s throat.

“Fuck,” Tommy said as he pulled back. “Goddamn shit fuck.”

“Does that happen a lot? You having panic attacks?” David asked, one infuriating brow cocked over the plastic frame of his glasses.

Tommy shrugged. “They’re not panic attacks,” he said crisply. “Billy gets panic attacks. I’m not like Billy. I’m not Billy.”

“Of course you aren’t; you’re Tommy, but –”

Tommy cast David a murderous expression, and David cut off and held up his hands. “All right,” he said, “I won’t press the issue. I am, however, going to ask you to come downstairs and meet my parents.”

“What? Why?”

Tommy wanted to throw up. He wanted to run, but David’s window was closed, and he couldn’t vault out the window like he could at the Kaplans. He wasn’t afraid to run away, but he wasn’t an idiot, either. This was a no-run situation.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” David went on, “but my little sister has inevitably told them that there is a boy in my room. My parents know that I’m bisexual, and whether or not we like it, we’ve been backed into a corner. What should I introduce you as?”

Stupid practical David.

“You can’t date me,” Tommy said. “You can’t. You have goals and shit and you’re going somewhere. You’re, like, really smart. I’m not.”

David stared at Tommy without saying a word. He stared too long. Long enough that Tommy went on, “David, come on. You gotta be real. I’m a bust. I’m probably gonna work in the food court for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll get outta the Kaplans and quit living at home, but I’m shit at school and I don’t have anything good to offer. I got nothing.”

David inhaled, real slow, and then exhaled audibly. He crossed the room behind Tommy and hitched the window open. He said, “If you want out, now’s your time to escape, because I’m about to say some things, and you will not agree with me.”

Tommy twitched. The window looking reeeal tempting.

But.

David.

“I need you to know that your occupation has no bearing on your value as a human being,” David said. “Your perceived ‘usefulness’ does not determine the value of your personhood, and you _are_ smart.”

“I dropped out of high school.”

“So?”

“I’m not good at reading. I don’t like it.”

“And? The American school system is designed to teach children how to follow directions, and plays to the strengths of people that excel at that. That’s why I graduated with a four-point-two GPA. I can follow directions. I don’t have anything that impairs my ability to follow directions, and I’m good at knowing what different teachers expect of me. I have a few theories about why traditional schooling didn’t work for you, but I know how much you hate being psychoanalyzed, and furthermore, I’m going on knowledge from what I’ve read, not professional training. So I’ll keep that to myself.”

David paused and ran both hands over his short hair before he continued, “Listen. You’re one of the most emotionally intelligent people that I have ever met. You are incredibly good at identifying what people are feeling and what they need. Whether or not you act on it – that’s another box of crayons.”

“So what? What’s your point?”

“My point is that ‘going somewhere’ is a bullshit phrase. It implies that academia is more important than other occupations and belittles people that don’t fall into society’s expected mold. Some people, like me, are good at it. I love learning and reading and going to school, but that isn’t an inherently superior state of being. I don’t know to fix a sink, but the plumber that bailed out our bathroom last week does. He has a skill that I don’t, and that skill is just as important as anything I can do, because without him, I would literally be living in my own filth.”

“Okay, cool. I’m not a plumber. I serve people gross noodles.”

David pointed a finger at him. “Your job is not who you are. Your occupation shouldn’t be your entire world. You need things and people to love, and sometimes those overlap with work, but work is not the fucking point, Tommy. You like to go running. You like to help your friends and your family. You keep going even after you’ve been knocked down. All of those are far more important than the construct of ‘going somewhere.’ You have value as yourself.”

David reached up under his glasses and pressed his fingers into his eyes. “Now that I’m done lecturing you, will you please come downstairs and meet my parents?”

Tommy scuffed his foot on the floor. He swallowed and asked, “If I don’t, are you gonna get in trouble?”

“Probably,” David shrugged.

“Then okay,” Tommy said, flapping his hand in the air indistinctly.

The relief on David’s face twisted Tommy’s stomach in knots.

David’s parents lounged in the kitchen with a practiced air of being chilled out, but their eyes laser-focused on Tommy and David when they tracked into the room. “Mom, Dad,” David said, “this is my b – friend. Tommy. He stayed the night last night. Please don’t interrogate him. Tommy, these are my parents, Chris and Dorothy, and my sister, Kim.”

Tommy plastered a smile on his face and stuck out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said.

**

It was a dick move, but Tommy ignored David’s texts for a while. He opened his snapchats but didn’t respond. At work he hid in the back, but Lisa said David wasn’t getting food from them anyway.

“That’s it,” Billy said, on night five of Tommy’s David boycott. He threw his gaming headphones off his ears with the carelessness of a rich kid, swung around in his swivel chair, and threw an empty Mountain Dew bottle at Tommy’s head and said, “I don’t know what the fuck happened, but you’re sitting around listening to Orville Peck on repeat. Please just fix it.”

“What do you know?” grumbled Tommy. “You have Underwear Model Theodore.”

“You could have plenty of people if you didn’t push them away,” Billy replied, folding his hands over his stomach.

“Don’t,” Tommy said.

“No, you,” Billy shot back. “As fun as this social experiment of watching you actually like someone has been, I kind of don’t want you to ruin it?”

“How do you know David didn’t ruin it?” snapped Tommy, which was unfair. He didn’t care. David didn’t have to make this so serious. Why was he so fucking serious?

“Because I’ve met you,” Billy said. “Quit fucking self-sabotaging. Fortify and text him back.”

“I hate you,” Tommy told him.

“You really don’t,” Billy answered. He turned away, fixing his gaming headphones back on his head, and resuming whatever new crap he was playing with Teddy.

Tommy rolled over onto his back on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. Billy, fuck him, had called the Orville Peck. If Billy could listen to sad music and be sad about a boy, then so could Tommy.

To hell with it. If he listened to Billy and failed, Tommy could rub his failure in Billy’s face for the rest of their lives. Tommy opened his texts with David and fired off the easiest message he could think to write.

**[8:14 PM] Tommy: **hey

An agonizing “...” went on for several seconds. Paused. Picked up. Paused again.

**[8:16 PM] David: **Hey.

Christ, punctuation? David was pissed.

Ugh. Tommy had hoped David would pick up the slack and bridge the stupidity gap that Tommy successfully put between them.

It was maybe possibly probably Tommy’s turn to do that part. Fuck his life.

**[8:17 PM] Tommy: **im sorry

**[8:18 PM] Tommy: **can im fix it

**[8:18 PM] Tommy: **fuck *i

**[8:20 PM] David: **Maybe. You work Saturday?

**[8:21 PM] Tommy: **8-5

**[8:23 PM] David: **Okay. Boards & Beans. 7 pm. You’re buying me a coffee.

**[8:23 PM] Tommy: **ugh the nerd place ? black coffee ?

**[8:25 PM] David: **I am a nerd. So yes. The nerd place.

**[8:25 PM] Tommy: **fine but ur taste in coffee blows

Tommy dropped his phone and stuck his hands in his hair.

All at once, the fact that he just agreed to An Actual Date socked him right in the face. He shot up, sitting up so carelessly he cracked his head against the ceiling. “Aw, fuck,” he groaned.

Billy paused his game and glowered up at him. He opened his mouth to bitch at Tommy, but closed it again when he met Tommy’s eyes. “What just happened?” he asked.

Tommy couldn’t lock down the panicked look on his face fast enough.

“I’ve never even – what the fuck do you wear on a date?” he asked.

Billy flattened his lips. “Oh, boy,” was all that he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Tommy wakes up to yelling and because of his history with child abuse has a panic attack. David successfully brings him down. 
> 
> Follow me @thepinupchemist for Young Avengers, sometimes other comics, sometimes MCU, sometimes selfies, and pretty consistent writing meltdowns. Most recently: TEDDY LOCKDOWN WE'RE GETTING NEW TEDDY CONTENT Y'ALL!!


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